Overview

A Finalist for the 2025 Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ+ Nonfiction Gender is everywhere. Politicians argue over it, educational systems struggle to define it, and our friends, neighbors, and children explore it. More than ever before, young people are questioning their gender identities and redefining the role of gender in their lives. How should our society―and we as individuals (parents, teachers, friends)―respond? In Gender Explained, Diane Ehrensaft, PhD, and Michelle Jurkiewicz, PsyD, separate medical fact from fear-mongering falsehoods and answer these questions: What should parents do when their child starts experiencing gender dysphoria? Which sports teams should transgender youth play on? How should schools teach young people about gender? And most important: What is gender-affirming care, and when should an individual have access to it? With clear, expert guidance, this book is a safeguard against political vitriol, and it offers urgent protection for those among us who are transgender and/or nonbinary. Far more than an introduction to gender creativity, it is an invitation to develop compassion for everyone along the gender continuum.

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Michelle Jurkiewicz, PsyD, is a licensed clinical psychologist and gender specialist in private practice in Berkeley, California. She has been providing therapeutic services to children, youth, and families since 2003. Dr. Jurkiewicz was an early pioneer working with transgender, nonbinary, and gender-expansive youth. In addition to providing psychotherapy for people of all ages, she trains newer clinicians in using the Gender Affirmative Model. Diane Ehrensaft, PhD, is a developmental and clinical psychologist. At the University of California-San Francisco, she is the cofounder and director of mental health at the Child and Adolescent Gender Center, an associate professor of pediatrics, and an attending psychologist at the Benioff Children's Hospital Child and Adolescent Gender Clinic. Her work with-and advocacy for-gender creative children has been widely covered, including by the New York Times, the Huffington Post, and NPR. She has been featured on the Los Angeles Times online, Wired online, and has appeared on Anderson, The Oprah Winfrey Show, and The Today Show. Petrea Burchard grew up in northern Illinois, where farm meets university, making her a townie with a love for animals, nature, and books. She started reading as soon as she figured out how and has been an actor since she could get anyone to pay attention. Petrea's stage experience covers everything from Second City comedy to Shakespeare, and her resume includes television, film, and voice-over work. Petrea earned a bachelor's degree in creative writing with a double minor in theater and French. Along with numerous articles and short stories she has published a time-slip novel, Camelot & Vine, and a book of comic essays, Act As If: Stumbling Through Hollywood with Headshot in Hand, about being a journeyman actor in Hollywood. When she's not narrating audiobooks in her Los Angeles home studio, Petrea loves to travel. But a hike in the mountains with her husband and their pit bull, Melly, is as good as a weekend in Paris.

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